What Happened to the Fourth ‘S’ of 5S?

Perhaps standardization should be bumped up to No. 1 in 5S

I believe that 5S is one of the most effective tools within the realm of workplace organization. Since its inception, 5S has gained a loyal following in many different types of work environments. Companies that have truly embraced 5S enjoy high levels of organization and efficiency.

For those of you unfamiliar with 5S, it is an acronym used to describe five different, yet integrated practices that all begin with the letter S. They are as follows: sort, set in order, shine, standardize, and sustain. Most businesses that practice 5S do a rather nice job implementing the first three: sort, set in order, and shine. However, for the fourth S, standardize, businesses seem to lag.

Why is this?

Is it that standardize is hard to implement? Is it misunderstood, or perhaps undervalued?

An example—standardize in an auto shop

Here’s a quick story about standardization, also known as standardized clean up. The setting for this story is an auto shop.

Now, auto shops have a well-earned reputation for disorganization and uncleanliness, and before 5S, this one was no different.

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Comments

Fourth ‘S’ of 5S

This discussion on the importance of the Fourth ‘S’ of 5S is quite insightful. Standardization is indeed important to make the execution of a process person independent. Great organizations outlive their founders and employees at various points in time. This to a certain extent can be attributed to the presence of standard operating procedures which guide the various business activities. Of course, these standard operating procedures need to be analyzed and evolved over time.

Fourth S

We started with the 4S here and trust me it made things so much easier for us to maintain. plus we took it one extra step and i wrote a 5S Manual. we also have an article on it check link below.

http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/metrology-article/secret-sustaining-5s.html

"SQDC"

Antonio,

I would like to offer a perspective on why the proper implementation of 5S is important. I helped implement Lean manufacturing at Dana Corporation in 90 facilities in North America, Europe (including Italy) and South America. But it wasn't until I worked for Koyo Bearings, part of JTEKT, which is 20% owned by Toyota, that I understood why 5S is important. It's not organization for the sake of organization, but to support the Toyota Production System (TPS) priorities of Safety - Quality - Delivery - Cost ("SQDC). Essentially, 5S organization is intended to help a team member, a supervisors, a manager, a custoemr / supplier who is visiting to help visually see if something is:

- Safe or not safe (e.g. marked safety walkways in a plant)

- Good quality or not good quality (e.g. defect chutes versus normal product flow)

- Ahead or Behind (e.g. FIFO lanes)

Best regards,

Jim Beckham

5S

Jim,

I think that a rational type: an engineer, a process designer or owner, a quality professional, etc. could see that there are many "mechanical" advantages to 5S including, but not limited to, some discussed in the article and comments. And I definitely would not disagree.

But when I read Hiroyuki Hirano’s book, I got the impression that 5S, as he described it, is more about worker discipline; that in order to teach discipline there needed to be a common task that everyone could do, and that task was cleaning.

Based on your experience, what do you think about that idea?